Of Witches and Warlocks: The Complete Series

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Vance spent the next several days pacing in the sitting room and watching the monitor of the Cummingses' driveway, waiting for any sign of life from the inside. The tracker we placed on their vehicle showed it had returned to the house without Darcy. It appeared that it hadn't moved since.

Dad and Grandma were absentee, spending much of their time in the dungeon, trying to reason with Darcy and get more information. However, Darcy refused to speak to anyone except for Vance, and he refused to give her the time of day. Grandma even begged him to please go talk to her again, but to no avail. He wouldn't have anything more to do with her.

Relations between Vance and my dad were particularly strained ever since Dad ordered him to stand down. They both seemed to avoid each other on purpose now. Vance and I had been eating meals in our room, rather than joining the rest of the family.

I understood why he was isolating himself, knowing he was trying not to blow up at anybody. I was afraid it was only going to be a matter of time, though. His emotions were constantly boiling just under the surface.

This morning had been the catalyst.

"Damn it, Vance!" my dad yelled, reappearing from the dungeon.

"What?" Vance asked, immediately irritated.

"That girl down there?" He pointed toward the floor. "She killed herself last night. If you'd just have gone down there and talked to her like I asked none of this would've happened!"

Vance shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, the world is now a better place because Darcy isn't in it." He left the room, leaving my dad standing there gaping after him.

"I don't like this, Vance!" my dad yelled after him. "You're being an ungrateful hothead!"

"Sean! Sean," my grandma said, dragging him over to the corner and speaking to him in hushed tones as she tried to calm him down. Jumping up, I went after Vance.

We'd all been walking on eggshells around the two of them ever since.

Currently, Vance and I were holed up in our room. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed watching him as he paced the floor, wondering if he was going to wear a hole in the carpet.

"Things just aren't making sense, Portia," he said, his mind still heavily caught up in everything. "The eclipse is tonight. We should've seen some type of preparations going on by now. No one has been in or out of that place since we took Darcy. Where's the rest of the coven? Which circle is the right one? Where do we go from here?"

There was a knock at the door, and Shelly entered the room, her face alight with excitement. "Vance, your grandparents just left the estate in their vehicle. They had a driver and another woman with them. It was your mom. I'm sure of it. She looked just like the demon who was impersonating her before."

Vance was out the door and down the hall before I could even get off the bed. Racing after him, I clattered down the stairs and around the corner into the sitting room.

Dad was rewinding the monitor, showing Vance the image.

"That's my mom," Vance said. "We need to go after her."

"We will. The tracker on the car is working well. Let's get everyone into the cars so we can follow them," Dad said calmly.

"What if they're going somewhere far away?" Shelly asked. "Should we take our clothes?"

Vance literally growled in frustration under his breath. "We'll just buy new clothes wherever we end up," he said through gritted teeth, dragging me toward the doorway.